Avskedet / Farewell / Der Abschied

The story of a difficult coming out, set between the 1930s and the 1950s. In her feature debut, Finnish director Tuija-Maija Niskanen tells the story of Valerie, growing up in a Finnish-Swedish family under the thumb of her brutal tyrant of a father, who is contemptuous of his frail daughter. He makes no secret of his many affairs, not even from his wife, who meekly acquiesces to him. Valerie feels no love from her mother, either. After her childhood sexual encounters with a brash young neighbour boy, she falls in love with Kerstin, a German woman of her own age. When her father finds one of Valerie’s love letters, while also learning of her plans to enter the theatre world, there is a massive uproar … The film is based on the memories of Vivica Bandler, a theatre director who also translated some of the Moomin works. With forcefulness and intense images, the story is told from the perspective of Valerie’s memories as it follows her emancipation within an upper-class milieu that was sympathetic to the Nazis.